


Untitled (I'll think of it later)

by Airasyraye



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gore, Language, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:43:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6083418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airasyraye/pseuds/Airasyraye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set just before Season Four's "The Rapture" casefic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dean sighed in annoyance, tossing his father’s journal down on the hotel room’s table. “I don’t know, man. I got nothing.”

Sam looked up from his laptop. They had been sitting in silence for hours, which was not uncommon when they were researching a case, but there was no mistaking that the silence was not as comfortable as usual. Since finding out that Sam was drinking demon blood, Dean just couldn’t look at his little brother the same way again. Thinking about it made his stomach turn for multiple reasons and so he more or less refused to acknowledge it, but couldn’t shake the worry. And of course, there were other things, other things Dean had wanted Sam to never know. Things that had happened in Hell. Things he had done in Hell. And now Sam knew. Knew all of it, knew what Dean had done. The blood, the pain, the fear, the rage. 

The dark and twisted delight.

“There’s nothing in Dad’s journal?”

“Didn’t I just say that? I got nothing.”

Dean pushed up from the table and walked over to the tiny motel refrigerator, grabbing a beer. He automatically got one for Sam as well, because there were just certain things that were second nature.

Although Sam was pursing his mouth in a classic bitchface at Dean’s rudeness, he didn’t say anything about it and accepted the beer. “Not really. I mean, there’s some parallels to other monsters, you know, but a lot of monsters eat people, and it’s almost impossible to pin this down. About all we can know for sure is that it isn’t a werewolf because the timing isn’t right, it’s not a vampire because the whole body was eaten…”

That was a bit of an overstatement. They’d been in this little nothing Nebraska town for two days and six people were dead, two after they arrived. The victims *were* eaten, but far from entirely. Some had had their eyes removed from their heads while all had been slit open from neck to crotch like fish, all the tender bits eaten, with the bones, muscles, skin, and clothes left behind, bodies that were hollowed out like the world’s most gruesome taco shells. The male victims had had the added delight of having their sex organs removed, a fact the coroner had relayed with a rather pale face and adding that the method had been ripping, something that had caused both Winchesters to wince. And what was worse, the victims were left entirely in the open. It was as if the monster, whatever it was, *wanted* people to see. Two victims had been found in two different schoolyards, much to Dean’s anger, one in a church’s sanctuary, one in a hospital bed, one on a front porch of his girlfriend’s house, and the final one sitting up in a police car. The last one was incidentally said car’s officer and the local populace was in a panic. A curfew had been enforced as all of the victims had turned up in the early morning hours, all but one still warm according to the coroner, and therefore were believed to be killed the previous night. 

The local authorities were sure it was a serial killer, having fun and flaunting his skills. A psychologist on the payroll had told Sam and Dean, in their guises as FBI, that the serial killer was undoubtedly not new to the game, and, fresh from success at eluding discovery in previous crimes, was escalating and getting cocky. The rapid kills made the psychologist even consider the possibility there was more than one working together; a rare occurrence but not unheard of.

The idea of a pair had given Sam pause. While neither of them considered it was a human serial killer, they began researching supernatural entities that hunted together, but they were starting to come up short. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, demons, vetala, djinn, and others had all been ruled out. Something was always off; the timing was wrong, the things consumed were wrong, hunting in pairs or groups was wrong, or the ability to get in and out of locked places eliminated them. 

“Are we sure this isn’t just one monster?” Dean asked as he slumped back into his seat. 

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “Maybe it is. But one or two or twelve, we need to find out what it is.” He looked meaningfully out of the hotel room window, where the sun was maybe two hours from setting.

Dean set down his beer and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Okay,” he grunted. “Let’s look at the victims again.”

“Six dead in as many days, four women, two men. Different ages, races, occupations, social circles… The only things they have in common is that they’re all adults and they’re all dead.”

“We’ve got to be missing something.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what.” Sam sighed and shut his laptop. “There’s nothing. Nothing matches it all. Nighttime, organ eating, daily feeding, mutilation, leaving the bodies out… And the police say nothing like this has happened in recent memory.”

And the local county police chief--the place was so small it didn’t even have it’s own actual police force--had been on the force for forty-two years, had lived in the area all his sixty-one, and his father and grandfather had been the chiefs of police before that. 

“Has Bobby called back yet?”

“Nope. He’s still trying his sources.” Dean looked out the window himself. “I think maybe this time we just need to prowl around and listen for screaming.”

Sam made a face. They both knew that was a mixed bag of success. And either they found it and killed it…or they got there too late to save some other poor bastard from getting turned into some evil creature’s dinner.

“Lock and load, Sammy.”

“Sam,” his petulant little brother said automatically.  
They loaded up, both putting pistols in their waistbands, the fake badges in their jackets in case they ran into the authorities, filling their pockets with real bullets, salt shells, silver knives, holy water flasks, flashlights, and lighters. Dean added Baby’s tire iron while Sam added their father’s journal and the demon-killing knife to his supplies. Since finding out about Ruby, and more than a little annoyed with her for flat-out lying about being able to save him from his trip to Hell, Dean had taken to calling it the demon-killing knife rather than Ruby’s knife. Sam defended Ruby, but had agreed to cut ties with her and also took to using the non-possessive name. 

Dean wasn’t 100% sure he believed his brother when he said Ruby was out of the picture.

Outside, they started down the street. It was far from the metropolis New York was. At less than 5 square miles, Soda City, Nebraska was little more than an hour’s hike from end to end. Even traversing every street would take only a few hours, and the town itself was one of those situated in grasslands as far as the eye could see, which meant that whatever was chomping on folks had to be taking up residence within the city limits. Dean didn’t put it past the creature to be in the sewers, but both Winchesters were happy to leave that as a last resort. 

“Do you think maybe it’s a hybrid of some kind?” Dean asked after fifteen minutes of silent padding up and down sidewalks. 

Sam paused slightly, looking thoughtful. “Maybe. I’ve never really thought about it. You have the monsters who pass on what they are through pretty specific means…biting, blood sharing…but those that are born that way? I don’t know, Dean, maybe a ghoul had a kid with something? Would explain all the eating everything, but ghouls don’t eat daily or walk through walls, so…what does?”

“Ghoul and ghost? Ghoulst?” 

Sam gave him a look he reserved for Dean’s made up names. Well, fuck him, Dean liked making up names for new discoveries. 

“Zombie for the flesh eating and demon for the appearing inside locked places. A--”

“Don’t say it.”

“Demonbie. No. Zomon? No. Ooh, how about Dezombie?”

“That sounds like Rob Zombie went Swiss.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Look, can we think of one of your mashed up names later? And how is a demon going to have a demon child anyway? The body is human.”

“I don’t know. Ask Rosemary’s Baby.”

“That was some cult ritual to bring about the Antichrist.”

“Then maybe this is something like that. How about the nephilim? Looked them up once Cas came around, in all the angel lore. They wear us like meatsuits, too, but their kids are half-angel or something.”

Sam’s mouth was pinching in his deep-thinking face. “If it’s a hybrid of some sort, then we might be in some big trouble. No telling if the species’ weakness would carry over. Everything we have might be useless.”

“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, Mr. Positive.”

Sam snorted. 

They walked in silence again. Despite their bickering and chattering, both were carefully surveying the area around them, searching for anything. Movement, eyeshine, smells, strange feelings. Every hunter worth his salt, a saying well-received in the hunting community for it’s double entendre, knew that sometimes a sixth sense was more than a just a hoax by so-called psychics. 

Dean ended up being a psychic that night, as they were two hours into their prowling when the screams started. Both brothers jerked at the sound, turning to locate, then taking off together without a word when they realized it was coming from the next block. Across the street, through the gap between two houses, over a chain link fence, through the backyard, over the other part of the fence, through another backyard, over the third chain link fence, and through a second side yard between houses and they popped out into the street parallel to the one they’d been on, not even winded yet, guided by shrill feminine shrieks that went on and on. Lights were coming on in the houses around the area, but no one had yet come out. Police would surely be on their way soon.

“This way!” Dean yelled, running at an angle across the street, Sam right beside him. 

The screams ended, but whatever woman was making them was not dead, as they could now hear the gasping, hysterical sobs of someone on the edge of a mental breakdown.

There she was, at first hidden by a parked SUV, sitting in the orangey glow of a street lamp, hands clutching the sides of her head, her whole body shaking and swaying with emotion.

“Hey!” Dean called as both brothers hurried to her. Sam knelt beside her while Dean stood guard, looking this way and that. 

“Miss?” Sam asked, reaching out to lightly touch the young woman’s shoulder. “It’s okay, we’re FBI. Can you tell me what happened?”

“She killed him, she killed him!” the woman shrieked, swaying and sobbing harder, her voice so strained it was hard to understand her. “She killed him, she killed Chris!”

“Who did?” Sam asked, using that same gentle voice he did around victims that Dean always secretly admired. “Where did she go?”

The woman was beyond further explanation. She abruptly fainted, Sam catching her before she could smash her head on the sidewalk, and laying her down before standing, both brothers now guarding her in case the monster came back. Out came the demon-killing knife, Dean’s pistol, and the flashlights. Sweeping the houses next to them, Dean’s light found something.

“Sam.”

A pair of boots were sticking out of the deep shadows between the houses nearest. The brothers exchanged a look, then Dean started forward, leaving Sam with the woman as sirens started in the distance. Since the start of the killings, five patrolmen had been assigned to the tiny town on a full-time basis, a makeshift station being set up in a closed-down bookstore at the center of what passed for a shopping district. It would take them all of two minutes to get there. If the monster was here, Dean had to be quick.

A quite hiss of disgust escaped him as his flashlight lit up the corpse. A man, barely into his twenties, laying on his back and limbs spread out, eyes staring sightlessly up into the sky. Unquestionably dead, carved open from crotch to collarbone, the messy squish of internal organs splayed out through the wound. It looked to Dean like whatever monster had gotten him had grabbed handfuls and simply yanked everything out, before their arrival scared it off and it dropped whatever it hadn’t already crammed into its disgusting maw. 

A rustle made Dean jerk up his flashlight. Nothing, just the wind in the leaves of the bushes. 

No, not nothing. A flash of white, moving away, almost out of sight. Dean took off, ignoring Sam’s cry, needing to off it before he lost it and it took another life. No more, no more blood and pain--

The flashback struck Dean like a locomotive. He doubled up like he’d been punched and hit the ground, for a moment THERE, Alistair laughing as he jammed the white-hot metal into a small slice in Dean’s abdomen, roasting his guts right inside of him, Dean’s screams reverberating in the dungeon set up just for the demon, Alistair’s little playroom, the stink of blood and burning meat, Dean’s burning metaphysical meat, the eternally blazing hot knife sawing up, through skin and muscle, splitting Dean’s breastbone with impossible ease, opening him up just like the victims, it was Alistair, had to be, he was here, topside, Sam hadn’t killed him after all, he was here and he was going to drag Dean back to Hell, no one to save him this time, not even Cas--

“Dean.”

The gravelly voice was too firm to be an illusion. Dean looked up, seeing Castiel himself standing there in his trench coat and suit, blue tie forever askew, eyes concerned. A hand reached out and Dean took it, getting to his feet, running his free hand across his face, relieved when the wetness that came back on his fingers was not red. Sweat and tears, that was all. He was the one who was topside. Sam had taken care of Alistair once and for all. Even if Dean didn’t like how, it was done and that bastard could never touch him again. Could never lead him down that path again, where HE was the one doing the roasting.

“Dean.” Cas’ voice again, louder and more firm this time. 

“Sorry,” Dean grunted. He sniffed, cleared his throat, raised his face. Met Cas’ gaze with reluctance. Sometimes he wondered what Cas saw when he looked at him. He knew what Dean had done, had to, even if Dean didn’t remember the actual act of being pulled from Hell by this angel, Cas surely remembered everything. He didn’t just know, he had SEEN…

“Are you all right?” Cas asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, fine, Cas, I’m fine. Just stumbled--”

“There is no sense in lying to me, Dean. I’m aware of your thoughts.”

“Get the fuck out of my head,” Dean said angrily. Immediately angry, the anger directed at Castiel even when it shouldn’t be. “No angels in my head, whether they’re the feathery fucks like Zachariah or you.”

Castiel merely looked at him, as he always did, not objecting to the hateful words regarding his brethren. Sometimes Dean wondered about that. No matter what Sammy had done, if someone had opened his mouth and talked about *him* like that, Dean would be at their throat in a second. Why did this angel follow him? Why did this angel allow him to talk to him the way he did, about him, about his brothers?

‘You should show me some respect. I dragged you out of Hell, I can throw you back in.’

A shiver ran up Dean’s spine, even as he defiantly held Cas’ gaze. What had changed from the Castiel who had stood in the shadows and quietly threatened returning him to that place of fire and agony to the one who stood in these shadows and studied him carefully, clearly searching for some sign that Dean was not okay. 

Before any else could be said, if anything would be said considering Cas could probably stand there and stare until the end of time, Sam came charging up.

“Dean! Are you oka--Cas.”

Sudden tension, all on Sam’s part. When Cas looked at Sam, it was with subdued kindness, different from all of the other angels, who looked at Sam like trash. Dean remembered their first meeting, Sam ecstatic that the angels he’d believed in secretly behind Dean’s back were real and there and then crushed when they turned out not only to be jerks but jerks who intended to kill one or both of them or use them. And yet Castiel, despite greeting Sam as ‘the boy with the demon blood’ had taken Sam’s hand without hesitation in both of his and always greeted him politely, as he did now.

“Sam.” A slight incline of his head, but holding out his hand for a shake. Sam didn’t take it. Since the whole thing with the demon blood being out in the open, since using his powers to kill Alistair on the spot with little effort, since Castiel’s actions had nearly cost Dean both his life and his sanity, Sam had taken a step back from any friendliness with Cas and generally changed the subject when he or any angel was brought up. Dean didn’t push it--Sam respected his own feelings about talking about Hell, Alistair, the Seals, how easily he had slipped back into torturing at the semi-request, semi-order of Uriel and Castiel. 

It was a pity Sam didn’t know that it was Castiel who had told Dean that to prevent Lilith from killing his little brother, he needed only drag the prophet Chuck into the same room and Archangel Who-Gives-A-Shit would come swooping down to end her. The Archangel hadn’t been fast enough, but Sam was alive, and that was all thanks to Cas. 

Which brought Dean back to his original internal question--why did this stone-faced, frigid being wearing a salesman like an itchy set of clothes he couldn’t get to hang on his shoulders just right give Dean the ultimate ticket to saving Sam? The one whose death, by all accounts, would make his eternal life a hell of a lot easier? 

“What are you doing here, Cas?” Sam asked, the reserve in his tone so blatant that even Mr. Emotionless standing with them should have picked up on it. 

He apparently did, because he lowered his hand and said, “I have merely come to check in on you. Now that Uriel is dead, I am working with Zachariah and it would be inconvenient if your hunter lives caused your deaths.”

Dean didn’t miss Castiel glossing over the actual reason, that Dean freaking out over a flashback had probably called Castiel from Heaven like a fucking siren, but couldn’t let those words go.

“Right. If we weren’t so useful to you feathery bastards, you wouldn’t give two shits if we became whatever is chowing down on the folks around here’s next meal.”

Castiel turned those fathomless blue eyes on him. 

“Do you know what is doing the killing, Cas?” Sam asked finally.

Without looking at Sam, Castiel said simply, “No.” 

“Yeah, lot of help, thanks,” Dean snarled. “Well, we’re not being digested right now, so you can go.”

Another eternal second of those staring eyes, then Castiel disappeared in a flap of invisible wings. Dean blew out his breath, torn between shouting after him to go fuck himself and stay gone and curling up in a ball in Baby and getting stupid drunk. 

He got to do neither as Sam turned to him and said, “The cops are here, Dean.”

Dean merely nodded, stowing his pistol away and getting out his fake badge. Sam had his out already and the brothers walked back toward the sidewalk where two police cars, an ambulance, two paramedics, four patrolmen, and a crowd of gawkers had all materialized. The woman was sitting up on a stretcher, utterly ignoring the questions one cop and one paramedic were asking her, the second paramedic busy trying to take her vitals and search for wounds. Two other cops were bent over the corpse in the bushes while the fourth about had his work cut out for him trying to keep the onlookers at bay. 

Sam and Dean flashed their fake badges, gave the story that they were patrolling as well until this case was solved, dodged the question if that was standard procedure for FBI agents, answered with a flat-out lie if the murderer had been seen, gave their statements such as they were, and hightailed it as the coroner was arriving.

Dean didn’t look at the body once.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

Back at the motel room, Dean reluctantly resisted the call of the rest of the beer in the fridge as Sam grilled him on what had happened. Dean lied to him, too, though only about the reason Castiel shown up. He still remembered Sam’s cruel words making fun of Dean’s torment not so long ago. Sure, he had been under the influence of a siren, just as Dean had been when he’d done what he’d never do otherwise and called Sam a monster for drinking Ruby’s blood and cultivating fucking demon powers, but it still smarted and he still wasn’t sure if he bought Bobby’s explanation that the siren’s venom was solely to blame. He was sure Sam didn’t either. They had just gotten past that particular black spot in their relationship, no sense testing it.

“It was a woman in white,” Dean said once he was done with his slightly altered story. “I saw her, just before Cas popped up and distracted me. White dress, long black hair.”

“Like Constance?” Sam asked doubtfully. 

“Yeah, exactly. Floatin’ away across the grass. We got bones to find, Sam.”

“It doesn’t fit.”

Dean knew that, but he didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to do anything but drink all the rest of the beer in the fridge, maybe get more or even something harder, and numb out the world for the rest of the night. 

“Women in white, they kill men and men only. Cheaters. Some of the victims were women, and women in white don’t rip out the entrails and leave the body. The men are gone, completely, just like Constance’s victims.”

“Sam, it was a woman in white. I know what I saw.” Never mind what else he saw. 

“Okay, a woman in a white dress, but not a woman in white ghost. Still… ghost or spirit, this is good, Dean, this is something we can use. There’s got to be a ghost of some kind that eats people and we just haven’t heard of it. I’ll keep researching.”

“You do that.”

“Dean?”

“I’m heading out to a bar, Sammy. Something’s still got to be open, curfew or not. Look, the guy’s dead, we failed.”

“But we interrupted the feeding. Someone else might be next.”

“What do you want to do, Sam, go chasing around some more? It worked out so well this time, huh?”

“Dean, stop. What happened, with Cas, and don’t give me that ‘he just showed up’ bullshit.”

If Sam was cursing, he was upset. Well, Dean knew upset and he wasn’t about to tell the truth. There was no open honesty between the Winchester brothers anymore. 

“Don’t know what to tell you, Sammy, ‘cause that’s it, not my fault you don’t believe it.”

“Dean--”

“You wanna hit the books some more, be my guest.” Dean swung Baby’s keys around his finger. “I’m gonna hit the bars.”

Sam’s expression was an epic bitchface, but Dean turned his back on him and slammed the motel door, getting into Baby and roaring out of the parking lot.

Like the hounds of Hell were after him.

 

******

A bar was indeed open, curfew or not. A rough, dingy, tiny shithole half-hidden down an alley in what passed for downtown on the wrong side of the tracks. There were all of three other patrons; a massive meathead in overalls who looked like he could stop a rampaging bull with a mean look, a filthy-looking blonde who was almost as big and hanging off of overall guy like a leech, and a third person, another man, huddled up in the corner, half-concealed by shadows, nursing a massive beer. The bar was being manned by a rough-looking woman with tangled brown hair, a scar on her chin that pulled the left side of her mouth down in a Two-Face sneer, and more tattoos than clear skin. 

“Ain’t you not the type t’a be in here, pretty boy?” she asked as Dean plonked down on a bar stool. “We don’t got martinis.”

“I want a whiskey,” Dean said calmly. 

She stared him down and he stared back. After a moment, the non-paralyzed side of her face twitched up in a grudging smile. The shot glass she smacked down in front of Dean was clean at least and she filled it almost to the brim with whiskey. Dean took it and swallowed it in one go, barely hissing at the after burn. She nodded her head just slightly in approval.

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, huh?” she asked.

Dean smiled. “That’d be the saying.”

She tilted her head to look down her nose at him for a moment, then nodded again. “Yeah. You’re a cutie on the outside, but you’re rougher’n snake skin on th’inside.” 

She walked off before Dean could say anything, and left the whiskey bottle on the counter. Pleased, Dean poured himself another and shot it down in one swallow.

He twitched when out of the corner of his eye he realized he was not alone at the bar anymore. 

“Cas. How is sometimes we can hear your wing beats and sometimes you appear quieter than a mouse?”

“I am capable of folding my wings in just before appearing on this plane of existence, resulting in a silent landing. I am incapable of doing the same taking off, so you hear my wings as I leave but not as I appear.”

“Ah.” Dean shot a third and was pleased to feel the familiar swimming in his head that heralded a good, fast drunk. “Want one?”

“Dean, are you consuming alcohol to mediate the effects of your flashback to--”

“Stop right the fuck there,” Dean said, lowering his voice even more and putting every ounce of strength into it. “You want to get me on the couch and be my shrink, you can zip off right now.”

Castiel’s head tilted slightly in that way he had, that made him look like a puppy trying to make sense of what he’d just heard. In a way, that’s exactly what he was. Dean’s head hurt sometimes trying to put the big badass Castiel, Angel of the Lord, Smiter of Demons With a Touch alongside the confused, naïve, sometimes weirdly earnest Cas, Alien Entity Trying to Figure Out Those Darn Humans.

“I have offended you?”

Dean sighed and rubbed his face. “No, Cas. You just…aren’t getting the point of this. This?” He raised his empty shot glass and waved it. “Humans do this to forget the shit that…that fucks them up. Yes, I’m conshu--consuming lotsa alcohol to forget.”

Castiel frowned slightly and Dean was convinced he was going to start in on some track or other about how drowning yourself in alcohol was unhealthy or cowardly or some other shit, but surprised him by saying very quietly, “I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Yeah?” Dean considered a fourth shot and then didn’t. “What about?”

Castiel looked at him with those eyes again, those fucking eyes that went beyond the shockingly blue eyes of Jimmy Novak, the hapless poor bastard Castiel was dragging all over the universe, and instead were like looking into the eyes of eternity. Way too much for Dean when he was two-thirds of the way to smashed.

“For many things,” Castiel said cryptically, and yet there was that strange earnestness again, hidden beneath the almost-flat tone of voice. 

Hell, sometimes, for an angel, Cas could seem almost human.

Dean didn’t want a chick-flick moment anymore than he wanted to discuss his mental state, so he just patted Castiel on the back and grunted. And even somewhat drunk from three quick shots of very strong whiskey, he didn’t miss the slight wince from Castiel, just the faintest tightening around the eyes and mouth.

“Cas?”

“It is nothing to concern yourself about, Dean.”

“Huh? What isn’t?” Dean set his shot glass down and turned to look at him fully, swaying ever so slightly on the bar stool. “What’s going on, Cas?”

Castiel shook his head. “I am fine, Dean.” Castiel suddenly tilted his head again, but more like someone who heard his name in the crowd. “I must go.”

“Hey… Cas, if the other angels were gonna do something…you know, to Sam…like Lilith was…you’d tell me right?”

Castiel stared at him for another eternal second, and then with a flap of wings was gone. Dean sat there for a long moment, then took that fourth shot of whiskey and felt it all the way down to his stomach.


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three:

He ended up stumbling into the motel room at a little after three am, making so much noise that Sam had a gun on him before he knew it.

“Damn it, Dean, I could have shot you!” Sam said angrily as he snapped on the light, throwing what had just been lit up by the lights through the open door Dean had been staggering through into greater relief. 

“But ya din’,” Dean said simply. 

“You’re drunk,” Sam said, full of disapproval.

“Thass right.”

Sam was sitting up in his bed, the one furthest from the door as Dean always insisted, that part of him that was the protector never quite leaving, his pistol in his hand but now pointed at the floor. 

“Take it n’one became gosht food?”

“No thanks to you,” Sam said, which was something Sam probably would not have said before demon blood. 

Something that would never have happened if Dean had been here with him. He’d saved his little brother with his soul only to lose him in the end. 

“Eat me, Sammy,” Dean snarled, having a hard time getting his shirts up over his head. 

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt hands on him, but it was just Sam, helping him get the shirts off, which Dean realized much too belatedly through the fog of whiskey and later beer that he hadn’t been able to get off because he hadn’t taken his jacket off. 

“You can get your pants yourself,” Sam grunted, tossing the shirts and jacket on the chair by the door and walking into the bathroom. 

Dean ended up on the floor trying. But he eventually succeeded and crawled back up onto the bed in just his boxers, giggling to himself. 

Sam reappeared from the bathroom holding a plastic cup of water. “Drink it,” he ordered. 

Dean did. And then promptly scrambled off the bed, nearly stumbling headfirst into the jamb of the doorway, and ended up violently relieving himself of everything in the bathtub. Sam came in behind him, groaning in disgust.

“Not even in the toilet, Dean?”

Dean’s response was a second torrent from his pissed-off stomach. Through the fog of drink, he realized that he was beyond plastered. Dean didn’t puke when drunk. He’d been tossing back beers steadily since he was sixteen and had killed his first monster with his dad, hiding it from both other Winchesters until he was eighteen and had been found out. 

“Maybe I should take you to the hospital.” Sam’s anger had burned out into concern.

Dean shook his head. “M’fine. Justa bit much.”

He hawked and spit, not missing Sam’s noise of disgust. Fumbling, he turned on the water, accidentally got the nozzle instead of the faucet, dumped freezing cold water on his head which made him sit back on his ass cursing, and then leaned back into the icy torrent to heave a third time. 

Sam leaned over him, switched the nozzle back to the faucet, then got one of the thin-as-fuck towels from the rack and rested it over Dean’s dripping head. Then the plastic cup was shoved under the faucet and Sam held it out for Dean to rinse out his mouth. Dean did so, then settled back more gently on the floor, holding the plastic cup, in his boxers, the towel over his soaking hair.

“Make Dad proud, huh?” he said bitterly.

“We’ve seen Dad like this before,” Sam said quietly. 

That was true. Not often, but man had it sucked when they had. And John Winchester never once, ever, told them the causes for the uncharacteristic forays into blood-alcohol poisoning. On this side of it, Dean suspected shooting Jo’s dad was probably one of them. 

“Dean, are you going to tell me what happened?”

The drink had loosened Dean’s tongue. “Hell, Sammy. Hell happened. That body? Used’ta look like that m’self time or two.”

Utter, appalled silence. Dean didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see it, the revulsion, pity, horror on Sam’s face. He didn’t deserve it, didn’t. Sure, he’d looked like that body a time or two. And he’d made others look like that body a time or two. You gave up your right to pity when you started doing it yourself, whatever Sam wanted to say otherwise.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam said. 

“Yeah.”

There was nothing else to say.

 

******

When Dean woke up, it was half past ten and he felt like shit. He was sprawled out on the mattress, half covered, pillow on the floor. The blinds and curtains were both drawn over the window and all the lights were off, bless Sam, but that still didn’t stop what light did come in from stabbing Dean right in the eyeballs. His mouth tasted like dead ass and his stomach roiled. 

On the nightstand between the beds was a giant pitcher of water, a plastic cup, maybe the same one, and a note from Sam.

Dean-  
Gone to talk to the coroner again, make sure the body matches the rest. Drink water and stay inside. I’ll be back by lunch.

-Sam

The idea of lunch nearly made Dean consider running for the bathroom again, but the feeling subsided. There was absolutely nothing in his stomach to bring up.

“Are you feeling all right?”

Dean jumped a mile and groped stupidly behind him for a knife that wasn’t there. The pillow was on the floor and the knife that was usually under the pillow was God knew where. It took his hungover brain around four times as long as normal to realize that the voice was Castiel, who was sitting in the chair in the corner at the table by the door. 

“No, Cas, I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

Castiel stood and walked over. Dean glared at him weakly. 

“What are you doing here? Sam call you and ask you to babysit?”

“Sam does not talk to me,” Castiel said matter-of-factly. 

He reached out his hand and pressed his fingers to Dean’s forehead. Instantly the hangover was gone. Dean felt great. 

“I have cured your body of the residual toxins of the alcohol,” Castiel explained unnecessarily. 

“Thanks,” Dean said grudgingly. Man, angel mojo did have some perks. “But do you mind looking elsewhere while I find my pants?”

“They are there alongside the rest of your clothes on the back of the second chair,” Castiel said, pointing. Then obediently turned his back. 

Dean flipped on the bedside light, then hopped out of bed and scrambled into fresh boxers, the same jeans, a fresh t-shirt, and a fresh button-up. 

“Kay, m’ decent,” he said. 

“Yes, you are a good man.”

Dean sighed and let that one go. Sometimes figures of speech sailed right over the angel’s head and he wasn’t about to touch that one. Then he frowned as he realized Castiel appeared to be shifting where he stood, rolling his shoulders.

“Cas? What are you doing?”

Castiel stopped and turned around. Back was the stoic mask of angelness that Dean didn’t buy for a second. “I am fine.”

“Yeah, you said that last night and I believe you as much as you believe me. What’s going on?”

Castiel studied him in that infuriating way, then abruptly light flared, making Dean wince, then watch as two great shadowy wings appeared behind Castiel on the wall. They spread out, taking up the entirety of the room, as impressive even in this fleabag as they’d been in the barn. The true, unmistakable sign that Castiel was an angel. 

“Cool, Cas,” Dean said awkwardly. “But I don’t know if you’re answering me or threatening me.”

The wings folded and disappeared, the light from nowhere fading. “I am not threatening you, Dean, I would never threaten you.”

Dean nearly said ‘since when?’ and stifled it at the last second. “Then you’re answering me. So…what? Something going on with your wings?”

“Yes. I am in molt because they are still healing.”

That got Dean’s full and complete attention. “Healing?”

“Yes.”

“What happened, Cas?”

Castiel seemed to hesitate, but then said calmly, “They were injured in Hell when I was saving you.”

Dean’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out for a long moment. Castiel gave him a puzzled look, but Dean got his mouth in gear before he could ask something almost endearingly stupid like if Dean had lost his voice.

“You got hurt? In Hell?”

“Yes,” Castiel said with that same calm indifference. “Molting is the removal of damaged feathers, making way for healthy feathers to grow in. An angel does not generally molt, as our wings are eternal and do not age, but they can be damaged and when that occurs--molting. My wings are returning to full health, but the injuries are slow to heal and were exacerbated by Alistair in that dungeon and then Uriel afterwards.”

Dean managed not to flinch at the name. He stepped a little closer, now feeling like shit for a whole new reason. 

“It’s been, like, months, Cas.”

“Yes. Injuries like this take time. But they are much better than they were when I appeared to you in the barn, Dean. Don’t concern yourself, they are healing. I am quite capable of flight.”

“Flying isn’t good for them when they’re hurt, though, right?”

Another pause, before Castiel admitted, “Correct.”

“You coming down here, flying around and looking after me…it’s making them so slow to heal, isn’t it?”

“Correct,” Castiel said again. “But that is not your fault, Dean.”

Dean, however, was in a towering rage in a heartbeat. “Where’s that fucker, Zachariah? Hey, you feathery douche, let him rest!”

“Dean!” Castiel sounded shocked. “That will not help.”

“Why not?” Dean demanded. “Me yelling at Douchebag Senior gonna get you in trouble?”

“No. It simply will not change matters and you are only making yourself angry.”

“’Course I’m angry, Cas. You need to heal, buddy, not flap down here every time I sneeze.”

A faint smile traced Castiel’s mouth. Dean shifted and shrugged. 

“Can I do anything, Cas? I know I’m just some lowly human, but--”

“Humans are not lowly, Dean. I am quite fond of them.”

“Yeah, well, that makes you the weird angel, doesn’t it?”

A faint tightening of Cas’ mouth made Dean realize he’d put his foot in his mouth. Well, that was a trademark of his. He jerked his head and said more forcefully, “Can I, or not?”

Castiel stared at him for a moment, then said quietly, “If you would be willing, a grooming would help.”

Grooming? Like a bird? Well, hell, Castiel had only sustained the injuries pulling his sorry ass out of the Pit. 

“You can bring them out so I can see them and not go up in flames?”

“Yes.”

Surprised, Dean nodded. “Well, then go ahead, Cas. Just tell me what to do.”

More staring. Castiel could win championships. Then he turned, shrugged out of his trench coat and suit coat until he was standing in only the suit pants and white dress shirt. The two coats were set on the edge of Sam’s bed, then Castiel rolled his shoulders and the air rippled around him. Coalescing out of nothingness were two massive, jet black wings. Except, they weren’t just black. As Dean stared, he realized that the wings shimmered as they moved, showing colors of forest green and dark purple, while the tips of the feathers lightened to navy blue. 

“Damn, Cas,” Dean said, awed. “They’re…wow.”

Castiel looked over his shoulder at him. “You are complimenting them?”

Dean nodded, speechless. He couldn’t stop staring at the enormous fucking wings sticking out of the white dress shirt, though he wondered how that happened without tearing the fabric, shimmering blue-green-purple, yet still deepest black. They were huge, the long flight feathers dragging on the carpet, the arched tops stretching probably two feet over Castiel’s head. 

“Thank you.” Castiel sounded surprisingly shy. 

“What do I need to do?” Dean asked after he found his voice. 

The wings spread out. They really were massive. They spread the length of the room easily; tip to tip covering probably twenty feet, they couldn’t fully extend in the confines of the motel room. Dean raised his hand, then hesitated, suddenly afraid. He didn’t know one thing about angel wings. What if they were more delicate than they appeared? What if he hurt them, hurt Cas? His hands…what they’d done.

“I trust you, Dean.”

Dean raised his eyes and met Castiel’s gaze, the automatic retort to not read his mind dying on his tongue. Castiel was looking at him so openly, far more than he ever had, even more than he had telling Dean how to save Sam from Lilith. Somehow, that simple offer of trust from a fucking angel, even if Dean despised most of them…

“Okay,” Dean said weakly, utterly unable to come up with anything better. He cleared his throat. “Um, what do I do?”

“Do you see the damaged feathers?”

Dean gave the wings a good look, looking past the magnificence and the simple mind-blowing presence of them and really looked. Yes, he saw. There were gaps in the long flight feathers and other feathers were bent. He immediately saw two broken primaries, an entire patch of crooked and ruffled secondary feathers, or whatever they were called, and what looked like a bald patch on the right wing up near the arch where some strange sort of finger-like extension appeared bent.

“Yeah, Cas, I see them.”

“Please remove the feathers that are broken.”

“Isn’t that going to hurt?”

“Yes.”

Dean raised his eyes to Castiel’s again, but Castiel was smiling. Sort of. About as close as the guy got. Dean hesitated, then reached forward, grasped a broken primary, and gently tugged. Castiel faced forward again and tensed. 

“Quickly, Dean.”

“Like pulling off a bandaid,” Dean said a trifle hysterically, then yanked. 

Castiel sucked in a breath, but the feather came free. Dean looked down at it in his hand, noting the shininess of it, but seeing it rumpled and broken almost halfway down the shaft. His chest clutched at the sight. An angel with damaged wings, because of him. Never mind that most of them were flying assholes with less kindness than a pissed off werewolf. Castiel was different. And he was hurt.

“They’ll get better, right, Cas? You aren’t lying about that, are you?”

“Of course not, Dean. They will indeed get better. They are far better than they were.”

That did not make it better, but Dean took the cold comfort. He laid the broken feather on the bed next to Castiel’s coats, then reached for another. In the end, four primaries needed to be yanked, while at least six more were already missing. The smaller feathers had to be taken in a fucking group, at least thirty total from both wings, and then there was that fingerlike part at the top of the right one. 

“Cas? What’s this part?” He touched it gingerly, but Castiel still hissed softly.

“It is called an alula. An angel’s wings are no different in anatomical appearance than that of a bird. Father was most pleased with the design and carried it over into mortal existence, just as humans are made in his image. The alula has a small bone. It is broken.”

Dean swallowed thickly. He set down his most recently removed feather and studied the jutting appendage. “I guess a splint won’t help in this case, huh?”

“No, but if you were to snap the bone back down, it will heal instantly. In this form, I cannot reach.”

So being stuffed in a meat suit had all kinds of set backs. Dean hesitated, then reached up with both hands. “Deep breath.”

He found the jutting bone amid the feathers and snapped it down. Castiel let out a tiny whine, the first real sound of pain Dean had ever heard from him, but then straightened. Tingles ran under Dean’s fingers and he jerked his hands back.

“That was my Grace, healing the fracture,” Castiel explained. He abruptly puffed out every feather, almost disappearing, and ruffled them all. Then the feathers smoothed out and the wings closed. Castiel turned to him.

“Much better, Dean, I thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Cas, couldn’t some other angel have done that for you? You’ve been walking…or flying or whatever…for months all fucked up like that and not one other angel has helped?”

Castiel’s expression turned closed once again. “I have been busy, Dean. Not only with you. They had been tended somewhat when I first returned to Heaven, but Uriel betraying us caused them more damage and I have not requested more assistance.”

Somehow Dean thought Castiel was telling him a half-truth, but he didn’t push it. He was the king of misdirection. 

“If I were not in a vessel, the healing would have been almost instantaneous. My powers are contained so as not to strain the vessel’s structural integrity past endurance, even if Jimmy Novak is one of the rare humans who can support an angel safely over a long term. Damage to the vessel can be healed instantly, but my wings are part of me, my Grace, and I am incorporeal on this plane of existence, so healing is a much more arduous process, combined with being contained, and that the damage was inflicted by demons. They were much worse at first. In truth, I was barely able to fly your soul from Hell.”

Dean swallowed again. Now he remembered how the wings had looked in the barn. BOTH alulas had been broken, he’d bet money on it. Feathers missing or bent, and the way that Castiel had seemed tense and swayed when he had spread them out…Dean had thought it was part of the fact that he was new in that body and focusing on containing his powers while he showed off the wings so as not to hurt him and Bobby, and maybe that was part of it, but now he thought maybe it was also from him causing himself pain just so he could show off his wings and make Dean believe he was an angel.

“You needn’t be upset, Dean. When I attempted to talk to you in that convenience store, I had already been greatly healed in Heaven by my fellow angels, before I took possession of this vessel. There are simply some injuries that must heal naturally.”

Mollified somewhat, Dean gestured to the wings still showing behind Castiel’s back. “Never considered there would be an angel with black wings.”

“Black is not the color of evil, Dean,” Castiel said, sounding maybe just a trifle defensive. “Lower ranked demon eyes are black, yes, but--”

“Didn’t mean it like that Cas. I guess I don’t know what I thought. Fluffy white wings.”

“Those are the depictions humans have made.” Castiel now sounded slightly amused. “Many angels do have white wings. Some of us don’t.”

“Yeah? That make you special, Cas?”

Castiel opened his mouth, then tilted his head again. “Sam is returning. I thank you for your assistance, Dean, my wings feel much more pleasant now.”

The wings disappeared into nothing and he put on his coats.

“Cas, you don’t need to go flying off immediately again, not if you’re hurt--”

“I am fine. Thank you.”

Wing beats and he was gone, seconds before the key in the lock. They somehow still found some motels that used actual keys and not key cards. Dean turned as Sam came in, holding a bag of food. Sam looked up as he entered, looking surprised to see Dean on his feet.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah. Cas came and cured me.”

Sam’s expression flickered, but what he said was, “Good. He didn’t stick around?”

“No.” Dean glanced at the bed and realized the discarded feathers were gone. Either Castiel had taken them--they were his after all--or they faded into nothing after a bit. Dean had no clue if the feathers used in spells had to be preserved once they parted from an angel or what. “I think he was called off. Big things happening upstairs and all.”

If Sam heard the bitterness in Dean’s voice, he didn’t say anything. Undoubtedly he felt the same way. Instead, what he did was point out that he had brought lunch in case Dean was feeling better as well as a report on the body. Dean waved him on to talk while he ate, his freak out over the body over and done with. He had hold of himself again. Helping Castiel with his wings had sort of grounded him. It had been…nice to help him. Sort of like partially paying him back for pulling him from Hell, sort of like helping Sam with an injury. Intimate, friendly. Dean realized he sort of liked Cas. Stick up his ass and all.

He realized he’d been liking Castiel for some time now. He thought it had started from the moment Castiel had told him that he feared the future as well, and that he doubted his orders. It made him realize that Castiel really wasn’t the cold, hard-hearted angel that had threatened sending him back to Hell, and he wasn’t an amused, sneering dickhole like Junkless had been. He could be an ally, maybe even a friend.

As Dean studied Sam across the table, he realized he could use all the friends he could get.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four:

“I still can’t find anything, Dean,” Sam said in frustration. “People-eating ghosts are apparently not that common. Ghosts are poltergeists or omens or just lost souls wandering.”

Dean took a giant swig of the soda Sam had brought with his meal and belched. “So let’s start asking around. Stop with the authorities and talk to the folks that live here.”

They had technically already tried that, of course, Sam using his soft approach to speak to the spouses of two of the victims and the sister of a third. It hadn’t come up to much. One had been going through a divorce and so, while upset about the soon-to-be-ex spouse’s death, hadn’t been around the person to know if there had been anything out of the ordinary. Both of the others had said their loved one hadn’t acted any differently or said anything different prior to their death’s. Nothing had changed, there were no new people in town, no new objects bought or skeletons in the closet anyone knew about. Two others had refused to talk to them, insisting they couldn’t handle it and that talking to the police had been bad enough. The last victim, a woman, had lived alone. That left only the woman from last night, although Dean considered talking to the neighbors of the woman who had lived alone. She had an apartment in a converted house and had been the one found in the movie theater. She had worked there as a manager and had been closing up. Four other people had been working that night and none of them had heard a thing according to the police. 

FBI uniforms on, the brothers drove to the apartment complex. There was still warning tape over the front door, even though the apartment hadn’t been the site of the violence, and there was no one to claim anything. They had already heard from officers that the woman had come to town only six weeks before her death, being the last new person, and that they could find no kin anywhere to claim the body. Into a potter’s field she would go and Dean could hardly think of anything more depressing.

It turned out he was wrong. When they had knocked on the door of the neighboring unit, a tiny old lady brought them in and gave them tea and cookies and fussed over them before settling in and dropping the bombshell that Kathy had been almost four months pregnant.

“The coroner said nothing about that,” Sam said.

“Wouldn’t, I bet. ‘Cause there weren’t nothing to see, not the way that girl was all torn up, bless her soul. Lord Almighty, what a terrible end to such a sweetheart. Girl had dark in her past, I bet you. I done had plenty in my own time, so I know the signs. Didn’t want to talk about the baby or the father, but I knowed she was pregnant just from the looks. Sick, you see, can hear just about everything through these walls and knew she was having her sicknesses in the morning, especially, though they come at any time of the day. Refused to have any champagne with me on New Year, and that’s a tradition. Turned down spicy food another day, too. Told me she gave up on her coffee and that it was the hardest thing. I finally asked her outright and she admitted it, carrying around a fatherless baby, Lord Have Mercy. No…no that coroner wouldn’t have nothing to see, way I hear it. Lord Have Mercy.”

“Can you think of anything out of the ordinary?” Sam asked. “Anything you noticed? People, phone calls, cars on the street…strange sights or smells or sounds?”

“Smells or sounds? What do you think this is, sweetpea, a ghost story?”

Dean and Sam both smiled tightly.

“Well…let me think on it. Kathy didn’t say nothing, no. Everything seemed was perfectly normal up to that night. In fact, she was smiling and wishing me good night as she was leaving, that poor girl. Sweet as cream, you understand, and sharp as a tack. Wondered what brought a girl like that in the family way to a nothing town with no one, but I didn’t ask.”

Feeling they were getting off track, Dean brought them back to it. “Are there any other new people in town, someone before Kathy? Or did someone die recently in a bad way, I mean before these murders?”

The woman had to be in her seventies at least, but she was also sharp as a tack, and she gave Dean a stare that would have made Castiel proud. “Ghost story or revenge story, son?”

“Just answer the question, please.”

“All right, all right. Don’t need to push the authority, boy. The answer’s no, not that I know of, and I know just about everything. Tiny town like this, you know everyone’s everything. She was the newest person we had. Kids move away, don’t hang around. And no killin’s before this neither. We’re a peaceful town, or we were. ‘Fore this, haven’t had a murder in almost five years, and then it was a drunkard killed his friend with a gun. They gave him reckless homicide, but it was just a sad accident from a fool hardly able to spell his own name on a good day.”

“What happened to the friend? His body I mean.”

“Well, only family he had himself was a sister all the way out in Kansas. She took him back there to bury him.”

So that was not the likely source of a ghost. 

“What about the others, the ones who died?” Sam asked. “Did you know them?”

“Sonny, didn’t I just say I know everyone’s everything? Knew ‘em all, most of them since they were in diapers.”

“Is there anything at all they had in common? Did they go to the same church or club or anything at all?”

“No, no, didn’t know nothing about each other like that. Oh, some had some doings. Mark knew Kathy as a regular patron at the theater and knew Margaret from the neighborhood, them both living on the same street. Catherine used to shop at Annabelle’s bakery regular, alongside me. Things like that.”

More dead ends. 

“No, ‘bout the only thing I can think of is just the saddest thing…they’s all in the family way, or their girls were or just had been.”

Dean and Sam both perked up at that. “All of them?”

“Yessir. Bit of an odd thing, too. Tiny town, tiny population growth, but they was. Kathy was four months along, Mark’s wife just had her third two days before--God help her with those little ones--Catherine and Annabelle both about ready to deliver--God Have Mercy, what is the world coming to?--and Robert, I hear he and his wife just lost one, how must she be right now? Okay, I don’t know about Jake, the police officer, but the rest, yes. And I hear last night Christopher Martin? Don’t know about him and his girl, Madeline, either, but maybe.”

That was something to go on. They thanked her for the information, for the tea and cookies, and then headed out. 

“Woman in white?” Dean asked again.

“It’s possible…but no woman in white eats people, Dean.”

“Mutated woman in white?”

Sam sighed, but more thoughtfully. “Hey, what about Cas? Can’t he--”

“No.” Dean wasn’t going to ask Castiel to fly down here when he wasn’t needed. “We’ll figure this out, Sam. I’m sure he’s busy.”

Sam said nothing, but just nodded. “Should we try talking to Madeline?”

They tried, but it was for nothing. She was heavily medicated and under observation at the hospital. The nurse there did answer a few questions, admitting that Madeline had insisted a woman had come up to them as they were walking on the sidewalk and without a word had dragged Chris into the darkness. 

“Is there any chance that Madeline is pregnant?” Dean asked.

The nurse gave him the fish eye. “Medical statuses of any kind are privileged.”

Knowing a brick wall when they saw one, they thanked her and left. Dean hoped Madeline wasn’t pregnant, not least because she was doped to the gills. They had seen her in her bed through the observation window and she had been white as the sheets pulled up to her chest, her eyes huge and staring, but seeing nothing. Dean doubted she had any idea any of them were there, or even knew where she was.

On to the library they went. The librarian was one of those folks who didn’t care why you wanted to see what you wanted to see and so she gave them not even a second glance when they asked for the occult section. She was, however, the old-fashioned type and she set them down at a table and brought the books herself. Massive, dusty old tomes that were not first editions and still looked ancient. 

Poring through the books, Dean and Sam spent the rest of the afternoon searching up anything for clues. Bobby at last got back to them, but without any useful information. He shot down Dean’s idea of woman in white the instant Dean brought it up, insisting women in white were scorned women who killed their own children, not anyone else’s.

“But the woman in white we think of ain’t the only type to wear white,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “Try branching out of the States, boys.”

“Does this mean we need to fly somewhere?” Dean asked uneasily.

“No. Research stuff from other places. I’ll be looking, too.” Bobby disconnected.

“Whew,” Dean said, clicking the phone off. “Okay, you heard the man. Foreign monsters, let’s go.”

Easier said than done. While technically most monsters either had foreign roots or foreign counterparts, they could be easily found in English. Ghost, witch, werewolf, ghoul, vampire, they all were known worldwide. Try something specifically foreign and the texts became smaller and a lot less likely to be in a language the boys knew. Or rather, Sam knew. Not to mention that there were dozens, hundreds, of other cultures with their own special baddies, and neither brother knew for sure which were real and which were made up. 

“Books aren’t the way to go,” Sam said after another two hours of headache. “Not this time, and at least certainly not here. We need a search engine.”

The laptop was back at the motel. They left the books for the librarian to clean up as she had asked and headed back. It was nearing nightfall yet again and they were no closer than last night, and Dean knew that a curfew wasn’t going to stop whatever this was. At least two of the dead had been killed indoors anyway. 

Dean decided they needed to split up again. They were getting nowhere and had to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. He dropped Sam off at the motel to research on his laptop while he headed into town and to the bakery where Annabelle had worked. It had been closed since her death, but on the way back to the motel, Dean had seen it was open again. Any lead at all would help.

The lady running the bakery was a sweet late-middle-aged woman who was just as nice as the lady in Kathy’s apartment. She asked Dean to sample a new batch of cinnamon-apple tarts, which to Dean were sort of like tiny pies and therefore awesome, and insisted he take one for Sam, though she only knew him as his FBI partner and not his brother.

“Did you know Annabelle well?” Dean asked.

“Oh, yes. Her mother was my best friend in school.” Mrs. Marchum’s eyes suddenly sprang up with tears. “Lost Clara top of last year to cancer, which I guess is some sort of terrible blessing as it would have killed her worse to know what happened to Annabelle. Who could do such a thing to someone? Do you have any idea?”

“We’re working on that. Was Annabelle pregnant?”

“Yes, yes, seven months, almost eight. The baby was gone, Agent, gone, and I--” She took a great shuddering breath and sat down in a chair behind the register. 

“Mrs. Marchum, if this is too much--”

“No, no, nothing will be too much if it means you can find the son of a bitch who did this, you pardon my French. Just let me sit a bit.”

“A woman by the name of Mrs. Clarke--”

“At Maple Grove, yes, I know her. Everyone knows her and she knows everyone. She told you Annabelle was pregnant, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She also said all the rest of the victims either were, or their girlfriends were, or they just had one or just lost one.”

“Did she? She’d know. Oh, what is going on, Agent? Murders are terrible, but this?”

“Can you think of any in town or the county even who might have had a resentment of some kind to pregnant women? For any reason at all?”

“No, not a single one. I can barely wrap my head around the idea.”

Dean wasn’t sure if that meant she really didn’t know or she couldn’t fathom and so wasn’t trying. He decided not to push. “We’ve already asked if there was anyone new in town, but what about the county? Anyone at all who showed up just around the time of the first murder? Or someone who died just around then, in a violent way?”

“No. This is completely out of the blue and the cops are stumped and it’s got us all terrified. A city-wide curfew. My grammy is still with us and she says she hasn’t heard of things like this since she was in England during the Blitzkrieg.”

Dean decided to go for broke. “Mrs. Marchum, last night, my partner and I heard Madeline’s screams and arrived too late for Chris. But as we were coming up, I thought I saw a woman in a white dress, with long black hair, leaving the scene.”

“A woman in a white dress? Are you sure it wasn’t one of the neighbors, come out to the screams, saw what was going on, and hightailed it home? In her nightgown? I tell you, this isn’t New York, but there are plenty of people head the opposite way when trouble starts.”

Dean hadn’t considered that possibility, but his gut told him what he’d seen was the killer. He pressed on. “Please think, anything, no matter how strange, could help. In all your years here, has there ever been *anyone* who died badly that might have had some relation to children?”

“Died in childbirth, you mean? Well, yes, a couple, but that’s been years and years ago. Much safer to have your babies now. Last one was probably twenty years ago. Surely someone wouldn’t be out doing this because of that?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “Do you remember the woman’s name?”

Mrs. Marchum gave him an odd look, but said dutifully, “Linda Stephenson, my dad’s cousin’s friend’s wife. I told you, we know everyone. It was terrible. She was a tiny, tiny thing and the baby got hung up on the way out and both were lost.” A deep sigh. “Richard put a gun in his mouth two days after the double funeral.”

Dean licked his lips, shifting uncomfortably. “Thank you, Mrs. Marchum. I’ll bring this over to Agent Halen now.”

Mrs. Marchum nodded, now seeming lost in thought. Dean took the wrapped pastry and left. As he was getting into the Impala, he saw Mrs. Marchum at the door, flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED even though they were supposed to be open for more than two more hours. A glance at Baby’s dashboard clock showed him it was just two minutes after six. Sundown happened in forty-seven minutes.


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five:

Dean headed back to the motel, gave Sam the pastry, and asked him if he had any leads. 

“Uh, yeah, about twelve now,” Sam said. “Bobby got back. Apparently there are women in white all over the world. And get this, not all of them killed their kids, some of them had their kids killed.”

“Lost in childbirth?”

Sam looked up. Dean told him what Mrs. Marchum had said. Something dawned on Sam’s face and he picked up his notebook, crossing off several names. 

“A ghost in revenge for a lost kid,” Sam said. “The question is, what kind?”

“What do we have?” 

“Nine more choices.”

Damn it. And the sun was setting. Sam suddenly raised his head. “Childbirth. Every one of the victims had something to do with a baby, except for Madeline as far as we know. I wonder how many other people here in town have something to do with a new baby?”

Dean took the notebook and looked at the names. Woman in White was still listed, as was La Llorona--crying woman--Mexico, Delphine Lalaurie--New Orleans, Kuchisake-onna--Slit-Mouth Woman/Mu-Onna--Japan, Sundel Bolong/Wewe Gombel--Indonesia/Java, Lang Suir--Indonesia, Churel--India, Phi Thang Klom--Thailand, La Singuanaba--Horrible Woman--South America, 

“How many of these chow down on people?”

“A few of them, but we don’t know for sure they’re being eaten. The parts are gone, but some creatures wear them. There’s a monster in India, not the Churel, that wears your intestines as a hat. I didn’t include him because there’s nothing about kids.”

“Classy. Someone needs to introduce him to the Fedora.”

Sam smiled. “I’m going to the hospital and see if I can find any way to find out who in town might still be pregnant or something. Victim number four, Annabelle, the bakery lady, was killed at the hospital, remember?”

Dean nodded. She’d been killed while waiting in a closed examination room for a prenatal and the cameras in the hallway, stairwells, and elevators had caught nothing at all. “Did Bobby have an idea on who might be our monster?”

“No, and he says he’s still looking. These are what we’ve found so far. We don’t think it’s a crying woman or a la sanguanaba, because those seem to just be into haunting people, and Delphine Lalaurie, this crazy slave owner in New Orleans who tortured her slaves to death, doesn’t seem to leave New Orleans.”

“Ku--Kucha--”

“Kuchisake-onna? Probably not her, either, although she does sort of fit. Apparently the wife of a samurai who was cut up like the Joker for cheating, she asks people if they think she’s beautiful and if they say yes or no, she kills them, with scissors. Yes for lying, no for hurting her feelings.”

“No win there.”

Sam nodded. “You’re supposed to tell her ‘average’ and she’s so confused she leaves. Some sources say she preys on children, but not many, so I don’t think it’s her either, because she’s from Japan. That leaves the Woman in White, one who might be killing women, too; the Sundel Bobolong or Wewe Gombel, which are really two different things, but might be two sides to the same coin--kids, death, killing or sometimes only kidnapping; and the Mu-Onna, which is a woman who lost her child to starvation and tries to absorb the children of others, although they’re born beforehand, and there’s no talk of her hurting adults. She’s from Japan, too, and the others aren’t American either. I don’t know, Dean, nothing really fits, but it’s what we have.”

“How do you kill them?”

“Bobby’s working on that.”

“We don’t have much time.”

“I know, Dean! Most of this stuff is bits and pieces, here and there. He’s researching. Meanwhile, I’m going to the hospital. Are you coming?”

“No. Someone has to be out there, in case someone gets attacked. We might not have been fast enough for Chris, but… Find out anything you can at the hospital and call me if you find someone about to have a kid or something. Then I can head over there. Meantime, I’m gonna be combing the streets.”

Sam studied him for a moment and Dean just knew he was asking himself if he thought Dean was going to have another breakdown. Well, he wasn’t. He was here, Sam was safe, Alistair was dead, and it was back to formula. He was determined about that.

In the end, Sam said nothing, for which Dean was grateful. Instead, Dean drove him out to the hospital, where he would have a pick of vehicles to hot wire if it came down to it, then he started cruising the streets with Baby, all the windows down, daring the bitch to try again. The sun went down as he drove and Dean noted that there was no one out. Not another car moved, at least not until he passed the makeshift station a block from the hospital while doubling back on patrol. Then red and blue flashed in his rearview and he pulled over.

“Ahh, didn’t realize it was you, Agent,” the officer said after striding up to the window and peering in at Dean with a flashlight. He looked barely old enough to shave. “We’re glad to have you DC boys here, but damned if we know what’s goin’ on around here. You ever seen anything like this?”

“All the time,” Dean said truthfully.

The officer shivered. “Well, more to ya bein’ the kind’a man can stomach all that. Me, I like it here in nowhere. Easy job, just sittin’ listen’ to music on the radio, waitin’ for some dumb kid in a souped-up pickup break the speed limit, gettin’ to talk to the pretty girls at the café they got back home when it’s lunch time.” He grinned. 

“You see or hear anything, Officer?” Dean couldn’t remember his name for the life of him.

“Tonight? Nah. Been quieter’n church. You’re the first person I’ve seen since curfew started. Where’s your partner?”

“At the hospital, doing research.”

“Yeah. Damndest thing, someone gettin’ folk right there in plain sight at the hospital and the movie theater, and then there was Officer Pritchard.” This last was said in a pained whisper.

Dean nodded. “Hey, you hear of anything strange going on in the town before all this? Anything at all, no matter how small?”

“Hm? Nah, don’t live here anymore, but my ma does. ‘Bout the biggest things happen around here lately is the Winter Festival in December week before Christmas, the New Year at the Community Center, and the Valentine Bake Sale for the Women’s Auxiliary happened last week. And Ma tells me everything, from the neighbor gettin’ a damned banana tree to the dog havin’ puppies again.”

Dean forced a smile and nodded. Nothing there, but he wasn’t surprised. It seemed whatever monster they were dealing with was almost as new to the area as they were. It wasn’t unheard of for monsters to move, especially the type like rugarou and werewolves, who were human until they weren’t anymore. 

“Listen, the victims all had kids on the way or just had them or something. You know of anyone else in the town might be in that category?”

The officer’s eyes turned a lot harder. “You FBI boys thinkin’ somethin’s hurtin’ pregnant girls?”

“Wasn’t just the girls, but yeah.”

The officer turned and spat. “That makes me sick. ‘Nother reason you city boys can keep it. No, haven’t heard. Wait, yes I have. Ma said her neighbor’s daughter went ’n’ got herself pregnant. Dumb kid, she ain’t but 16. Anyway, she’s due sometime April. Lives ‘cross the street from the guy got that banana tree, just got back in last night from a family trip. Why? You thinkin’ this monster gonna be after her?”

Oh, if only the poor officer knew ‘monster’ was more accurate than he meant it. Dean nodded and started Baby’s engine again. “What street?”

“Listen, I gotta call this in--”

“What street?”

“Bayberry. Hey!”

Dean pulled away, slowly enough that the officer had enough time to back up before getting his toes run over by the Impala’s back wheels, but then accelerated. He reached into his jacket pocket and grabbed his phone, calling Sam, who answered on the second ring. 

“Sam, I’m heading to Bayberry. One of the cops says his mom’s neighbor’s kid is pregnant. Meet me there.”

“Can’t, Dean. If this thing is after pregnant women or something, it’ll come for Madeline. Just confirmed, she’s pregnant.”

“How’d you find that out? Thought she was catatonic.”

“She was until this bit of news reached her. Now she’s hysterical, throwing things and screaming Chris won’t get to see his baby. They had to tie her to the bed and she’s been screaming for six hours they said. Can’t medicate anymore, now that they’ve confirmed.”

“Damn. And we still don’t know what this is. Take care of yourself, Sam.”

“You, too. I’ve got salt, Ru-the demon-killing knife, one of the iron knives, some silver bullets, and holy water. Whatever it is, I’ll probably at least be able to ward it off.”

Dean had Baby and Baby had all of that and much more in her trunk. He didn’t miss Sam’s near slip-up with the knife, but he said nothing about it. “Be careful.”

They disconnected and Dean turned onto Bayberry. It wasn’t hard to find the right place. Bayberry wasn’t a street but a court, and of the six houses on it, the one with the banana tree was the immediate one on the left. The tree stood in the backyard, surprisingly tall, the long leaves creating a crown sticking over top of the house, looking a lot like a palm tree. There was a helpful spot light on both the front and back of the house to ward off robbers and Dean could see the tree as soon as he pulled in, which meant that the house on the right had the girl.

Dean rolled around the cul de sac and parked right at the curb of the girl’s house, facing the wrong way. Screw being sneaky, this was a kid with another kid inside her. Dean was going to end this monster.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six:

Unsurprisingly, not long after Dean pulled up, the cop showed up and pulled alongside Baby. Dean rolled down the passenger window and the officer rolled down his. 

“You really think a little kid like Becky is in danger?” the officer called softly, just loud enough for Dean to hear.

“Don’t take any chances,” Dean called back.

The officer frowned thoughtfully, then gestured across the street and one house further into the cul de sac--the one next door to the banana tree house. “My ma. I’m going to ask her keep an eye on you, ’cause I gotta get back to patrol. Chief don’t want anyone sittin’ still.”

Dean merely nodded, then rolled up Baby’s window again. The officer pulled into the driveway of his mother’s house and went in. Not five minutes later he was back out. Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the porch light, stood a lady in her fifties or early sixties, wearing a housedress, robe, and slippers. She waved to Dean, who waved back, then gestured for her to go back inside as the cop left. Without argument, the officer’s mother stepped back into the house and shut the door.

The time dragged by. Although unseasonably warm, it was wintertime, and the day went dark early, so almost three hours passed and it was still not half past nine. Despite his commitment, Dean felt himself becoming drowsy staying in one spot. Finally, he opened the door and got out, stretching and keeping his eye on the house. Nothing. Light on in what might be a kitchen and in two upstairs rooms, but no movement or sound. Frowning, Dean went to the trunk, popped the lid, then raised the false bottom and propped it with the shotgun. 

“Sir?” 

Dean jumped, raising the knife he’d been checking. It was the officer’s mother, and she barely twitched at the sight of a knife brandished at her. Her eyes took in the cache of weapons and she said nothing. Dean was grateful that the false bottom of the trunk now hid the devil’s trap painted onto the inside of the trunk lid. He lowered the knife.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that. You could get hurt.”

She merely smiled at him and he realized she was holding something. It looked like the type of tray that held veggies for a party as well as a large thermos. She held it out. “I thought you might be hungry out here, sweetheart. Brought you some meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, and sweet corn. Got a couple’a chocolate cookies in there for you, too. And here’s a thermos of some hot coffee.”

Touched, Dean put the knife back into the trunk and took the offered items. “Ever since I got here, ladies have been feeding me.”

The officer’s mother smiled wider. “That’s the Southern way, sweetheart.”

“Thank you very much, ma’am.” 

“Sadie Thatcher. You’re welcome, sweetheart. So polite. Your mother raised you the right way.”

Dean managed to smile back. “You really shouldn’t be out here, though.”

For the first time, the officer’s mother’s smile faded off her face and she looked up the driveway to the house. The light in the kitchen was out, but the two upstairs lights remained on. “Shouldn’t we warn them or something?”

“Sending them into a panic won’t help anything. They might hurt themselves or someone else or try to leave the house and walk right into it.”

“It?”

“A trap,” Dean covered quickly. “You know those murderers, always…laying traps for people. Like bunnies.”

She stared at him. “No, I didn’t know. You look after yourself. I don’t like you being out here all alone. I’ll be watching from the house. Jeffrey said he’d be swinging by every couple’a hours or so, but I’ll be staying up ‘til…we hear something.”

Dean had seen the cop car go by once already, but it hadn’t stopped. He nodded back to the house across the cul de sac. “You really should be getting back inside.”

She nodded and Dean watched until she was safely back inside and the door was shut. The living room light remained on. Dean closed Baby’s trunk, then settled back into the driver’s seat, opening the dish. She’d even used a large piece of packing tape to stick a fork and a cloth napkin onto the lid of the section plate. There was no gravy on the mashed potatoes, but they were delicious anyway and Dean happily ate the meal. He supposed Sam either made a meal out of the hospital vending machines or the cafeteria. Nothing like this home-cooked meal. Dean felt a little bad that Sam was missing out, but both women needed to be guarded. They were the only two they had solid leads on, considering they didn’t know any other possible way the monster chose victims. 

The phone rang just as Dean was finished with his dinner and chewing on a still-warm chocolate chip cookie. Dean quickly picked up his cell phone and saw it was Bobby.

“Hey, Bobby.”

“Any more bloodshed, kid?” 

“No. And don’t tell me you found out this thing only eats seven days and then goes to hibernation. I’d really like to gank this thing.”

“Nah, nothing like that. Listen, I found out some helpful information about the monsters on Sam’s list. He texted me the short version. I’m sending you both another text with the way you kill them. I can’t find out on the Mu-Onna or the churel, but both Sam and I don’t think it’s one of them, so that might be okay.”

“You find out any other possibilities?”

“Mostly just different names for the same thing--revengeful ghost lost a kid in a bad way, wants to take someone else’s.”

“But then why the men?”

“No idea. But there’s occasionally example of a monster don’t want to play by the rule book. Heard of a hunter in Alaska dealing with a selkie, and those things are Irish. Never hurts to be prepared.”

Dean smiled; that was one of Bobby’s favorite sayings. 

“Gotcha.”

“You look out for yourself, Dean.” Bobby disconnected.

A minute later, the phone chimed, but just as Dean looked down, movement caught his eye. He looked up, just in time to see a figure in a long white dress, with black hair to the hips, gliding across the cul de sac. It was flickering in and out of view as it moved, as if it were actually traveling by tiny teleportation hops. Dean shoved his phone into his pocket, grabbed his gun and tire iron, and hurried out of the Impala. 

“Hey!”

The ghost paid him no mind. It ignored the house entirely and continued its jerky path down the sidewalk, across the street, and into a backyard. Dean pelted after it, stowing his gun in his jacket as he ran and grabbing the flashlight. Ghost, he was sure of it, and therefore all bullets were useless, even iron, which would briefly disperse it, but wouldn’t stick. Gripping the tire iron in his right hand, he turned on the flashlight with his left just as he made the side yard of the house. For a moment, nothing, then he spotted it already gliding between the houses facing the parallel street. He scrambled over the chain link, through the backyard, over another fence, through another backyard, and over the third fence. Now a little winded, he hit the street and looked left, spotting the ghost jerking her way down the street. She was almost thirty yards from him. 

Dean raced after her, wondering if he’d be able to keep up his sprint before he flagged and lost her. He should have brought Baby, but he’d had no idea the ghost would just be touring the town, and who knew a ghost could move around like this? Not following the rule book was right.

The ghost went left at the end of the block and Dean ran after it, sucking in air as he went, sure he was about to be felled by anaerobic acid or whatever it was. 

Dean hit the turn just as tires shrieked. Up ahead, a cop car had hit the brakes, fishtailing at the parallel street just ahead of the short block. It hit the stop sign at the side door, and even from here, Dean could see the problem. The ghost was attacking the officer. 

The cop car rebounded off the stop sign, tilting it badly, caromed across the street, still fishtailing, and hit a tree almost dead center in the hood, but it was going a low rate of speed by that point and barely dented. Dean angled diagonally across the yard and ran up to the driver’s side door of the cop car.

The window was painted with blood. Stomach sinking, he hooked his fingers into the door handle and yanked it open, even as he swung back the tire iron.


End file.
